Osteoporosis is the "silent epidemic" among women over 50, with one in four Irish women affected in their later years, a medical specialist told a weekend conference in Dublin.
More than 700 women - and some men - attended the conference on the health of women over 50. Dr Cathy Casey, a consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology at St John's Hospital in Limerick, said ageing women lost bone mass at three times the rate of their male counterparts. While men lost 0.3 per cent of their bone mass per year, women lost 1 per cent.
During the menopause, the depletion of a woman's bone mass accelerated - to up to 3 per cent a year. It returned to a rate of 1 per cent a year after the menopause.
"There is a possibility of losing up to 50 per cent of your bone mass," Dr Casey said. "You can imagine how devastating that can be."
Osteoporosis can give rise to continual fractures and bone breakages as well as vertebral collapse, leading to loss in height and curvature of the spine, the characteristic "hunched over" appearance. It is not usually identified until the patient breaks a hip, wrist, ankle or spine after a minor fall.
Once osteoporosis is well established, treatment is difficult, Dr Casey said, although bone density loss could be arrested with hormone replacement therapy and other tablet combinations. "It is never too late to start," she said, advising a woman who said she had lost an inch in height to go to her GP to have her bone density measured. Dr Casey said this was essential in all postmenopausal women.
All women, particularly those in their teens and early 20s - the stage at which most bone mass is laid down - were advised to ensure they absorbed enough calcium. "The body is far better at absorbing calcium from natural sources, rather than from supplements," Dr Casey said. "So I would advise women to drink at least a glass of milk a day. And make sure they are getting enough exercise."
Dr Vincent Maher, medical director of the Irish Heart Foundation, said Irish women's mortality rate from heart disease was 20 per cent higher than the EU average. Of the 13,451 Irish people who died from heart disease last year, 48 per cent were women.
"It is not just a man's disease," said Dr Maher, pointing out that women were 2.7 times more likely to develop the disease after the menopause than before it.
Ms Norma Cronin, co-ordinator of anti-tobacco programmes for the Irish Cancer Society, said that although the percentage of Irish women smokers had declined from 37 per cent in 1973 to 28 per cent in 1994, the reduction among men had been more dramatic - down from 49 per cent in 1973 to 29 per cent in 1994.
"This is a very worrying trend for women - they are not kicking the habit as well as men," Ms Cronin said.
Each year, 500 Irish women died from lung cancer. Smoking also accounted for 30 per cent of the deaths caused by cancer of the mouth, bladder, pancreas, stomach, larynx and cervix.
Women should note, Ms Cronin said, that deaths from lung cancer had surpassed deaths from breast cancer in Scotland and the United States. "And smoking-related cancer is totally preventable."
While most people did not succeed in giving up smoking at the first attempt, Ms Cronin said this should be seen not as "failure" but as a "relapse".
The conference at the RDS in Dublin on Saturday was organised by Eli Lilly and Co (Ireland) Ltd.